In present day point-of-sale (POS) operations, the MICR indicia that are to appear on the check of a customer are added after the sale, and at a remote location: either at the bank, or in a separate, back room at the retail site.
For the first time, this invention seeks to eliminate the post-operative role of supplying the required MICR indicia on a check presented for POS payment at a retail establishment. Owing to its new function, machines now being designed by the present assignee of this invention must be able to encode and read MICR located in a specific field (i.e., the amount field) of the check at the point-of-sale. Because of the precision required for MICR encoding, it is necessary to keep the encoding mechanism fine tuned and to immediately cease encoding checks if the mechanism degrades to the point that satisfactory characters cannot be encoded.
In a MICR encoder of the new machine, the MICR characters must be printed at a precise distance relative to the right edge of the check in order to place the MICR in the proper field site. In order to accomplish this, an optical sensor is provided to detect the edge of the check and stage it at a known location from the thermal, MICR print head. It then becomes an easy matter to advance the check by a stepper, drive and print motor a fixed number of step increments in order to start the printing sequence.
In addition, it is essential that the encoded MICR characters be verified after printing to assure their accuracy. The MICR indicia imprinted upon each check extend to each edge on the left and right of the check to within 0.31 inches. It becomes necessary, therefore, to provide an additional read head.
The performance of our MICR encoder can be influenced by the substrate (paper) characteristics. This diagnostic function can be used to match the printing parameters and performance to the particular substrate used at each customer location.
Performance of conventional MICR readers is determined by reading test documents printed to the extreme limits of the various check specifications. These performance tests have the limitation that the information obtained therefrom is a "go/no-go" assessment. Additionally, check print equipment is designed to print checks in specification. These check test documents are difficult for check printers to produce because they are typically printed to the very limits of specification. As a result, many of these test checks are in fact out of specification, causing many problems when they are used to assess as part of hardware performance assessment via diagnostics. Therefore, the present invention reflects the development of a diagnostic program that adjusts the print parameters of the MICR print head to tune the check encoder so that printed characters are always within specifications, and at their best possible level of performance. In addition, if the encoding cannot be accomplished satisfactorily, the encoder may be disabled, thus preventing defective MICR characters on checks, which may lead to reading problems during subsequent check processing.
The diagnostic system of the invention provides an intelligent, closed loop system that adjusts and fine tunes the print system. In so doing, the diagnostic system may eliminate service calls by field service personnel, and provides quick verification of system performance. In the event that a service call becomes necessary, diagnostic information stored within the printer or the controller to which the printer is attached, may be useful to the service technician repairing the machine.